All Rileyed Up

Thanks to Whee! All the Way Home for ghosting me.

I need to return to my costume making now. Robots and witch pictures coming at ya from the House o’ Riley. Plus more two fun costumes tomorrow night at the costume party husband and I are going to. I’ll just let you wait and be surprised on what that one will be…

Have a great night!

What do people with a peg tooth, no belly button, and differently sized feet, some with missing bones, have in common?

a) They’ve all been characters in a Flannery O’Connor short story
b) They all made an appearance yesterday on my giveaway post’s comments.
c) Possibly both.

My post yesterday got more comments than my last 50 posts combined, which is both a sad fact about the previous 50 posts and a surprising fact to know that an Amazon gift certificate could introduce me to such an array of entertaining folks with uncanny multitasking abilities when it comes to bodily functions. I certainly can’t burp and fart at the same time. (Although when I was a kid I did used to have what I called the Burp Dance, which was a move that involved chanting and knee shaking and enabled me to burp on demand. It drove my brother batty. “How does that always work?!” he would scream in confusion.)

Anyway, if you ever think the world has gotten too normal, by all means, check out the comments on my post, especially this one from Sharla, AKA my new best friend:

I think horned melon looks really gross, I want to live closer to the beach and I’d even be glad to help clean it up, I think Princess Beard is adorable (I teach preschool out of my home and she is actually quite talented), I hope you’re healed now from that infection, and you are funny even when you don’t try, although your dog is cute. Oh, and about me, I love getting free stuff but I like finding blogs I want to read even more. I’m now a subscriber!

Here’s one more sample comment, from Nick PapaGeorgio of Cubelife STL (His name’s not PapaGeorgio! It’s Rusty Griswold and he’s a C+ student!):

In 1992 I went down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While down in the French Quarter, I met a girl about my age who looked totally goth, which was kind of a turn on for me.
We sat in this dark, smokey bar for hours and talked literature, music, etc. She was into The Cure (big surprise), early Depeche Mode (once again, big surprise) and really like Edgar Allen Poe. Me, being a Poe fan, led to us talking about Poe and all of his dark and twisted glory.
After about 3 hours of this, she invited me back to the place she was staying at. I thought I would get lucky, so I went along. We walked about 2 blocks north of the French Quarter to this old but very nice house. She let me in and when I walked in I could not notice but how dark and muggy it was in there, even more so than outside. She asked me to follow her and I go nervous when I heard several other voices.
Well long story short, she and her friends claimed that they were vampires and thought I would be a good addition to their brood since I could be a transition between the typical member and the typical population.
Needless to say that I bolted out of that house and ran faster than I think I had ever ran before.

Oh, New Orleans, I miss her so.

Hey Nick, if that girl’s name was Christine, you were right to run.

And since we’re already on the subject of New Orleans, here’s a wonderful Wordless Wednesday shot from Tricia at Momdot. How much you want to bet that guy was headed to Oz?

Looking forward to more fascinating stories and quirky life details y’all.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW OVER. THANKS FOR PLAYING. YOU’RE ALL VERY INTERESTING.

Surely, there is something on Amazon that you can find that you would like.

The rules for the giveaway are simple. With a catch. (So really, not simple).

You must leave a comment on this post but it cannot be something lame like “I want to enter this giveaway.”

Tell me something interesting - can you touch your nose with your tongue? Do you have more than eleven body piercings? Do you think Mark Twain is funny or irritating? Please, tell me something interesting, because I don’t think I can stand to read a bunch of “I’m in for the giveaway” comments. If you’re really pressed to come up with your own comment, try one of these options and fill in the blank:

a) Coffee tastes like _______ .

b) Flavor Flav is ________ .

c) We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these _______ .

d) I have _______ children and two _______ .

e) Eggs taste best when _______ .

f) I _______ read(ing) All Rileyed Up. (Flattery will get you _________ ).

I will most likely do a random drawing. But if someone in particular REALLY makes me laugh, I might just declare that person the winner.

Oh, and bonus: no mailing involved. All you need is an email for me to send you the code. Which means anyone can play, US, International, Bloggers, non-Bloggers, etc.

Other details –
You can only leave one comment. So if you can touch your nose with your tongue AND have eleven piercings, leave both of those details in one comment or pick which one you’d prefer to tell. If you want extra entries, you can get one entry for every post of mine that you Stumble or Digg (or just tell me which other socal bookmarking site you prefer to use, I’m sure my button at the bottom has a link to it, but I’m only only checking Digg and Stumble unless you notify me otherwise) between now and the day I draw the winner, which is Saturday November 1st.

What I’ll do is send the winner an email or comment on their blog, wait three days for a response, and if they respond, they get the code. If they don’t respond, I’ll choose someone else.

This past Saturday, the family participated in a beach clean up:

Prudential California Realty was sponsoring events up and down the California coast and we attended the one at Doheny Beach. It was exciting for the kids to learn about keeping our ocean and our water clean, despite that feeling of despair that can creep in when you realize how much there is to clean up, kind of like the feeling of looking at your dirty house two hours before guests are coming over and thinking I am never going to get this all clean (only instead of just your kitchen, it’s the whole ocean).

The Surfrider Foundation addressed the group and stressed the importance of picking through the seaweed for all the little bits of garbage that get stuck in the seaweed. When the tide comes in and takes the seaweed back into the water, these little bits dislodge and fish mistake it for food.

For example, take this pile of seaweed right here:

This is one handful of what I found in it:

A used Band-Aid, fishing wire, and Styrofoam (you can see more fishing wire tangled up on the ground).

My family spent our clean up time going through these piles of seaweed. It was a way of teaching the kids that everything matters, that something as unnoticeable as a speck of Styrofoam was still worth picking up and disposing of properly. The Boy’s catchphrase of the clean-up was “Can the fish choke on this?” and if the answer was yes, we put it in the bag.

When we returned to the starting point and added our bag of garbage to the pile in the dumpster, people were comparing the crazy pieces of garbage they found:

A suitcase

Fencing? Lobster cage?

We had nothing large to show, only a bag of bits and pieces, of the ignored bits of pollution that float in and out of our ocean every day because “such a little thing surely couldn’t matter.” But put a couple hundred little things together, like there were in my garbage bag, and you’ll see how quickly little pollution adds up to big pollution.

Keep this clean, won’t you?

Anyone interested in ocean conservation should check out the Surfrider Foundation.

This is who Little No Limit brought home today from school:

“This is Princess Beard!”

I have many questions about Princess Beard, beginning with “Where are your other facial features?”

When I asked Little No Limit where the eyes and nose where (I figured the mouth would be hidden by the ginormous beard), she said “There,” and pointed to the blank spaces where they should have been. I didn’t see them but clearly Little No Limit thought I should have.

I guess Princess Beard is nothing more than another case of not noticing one’s normal features in favor of the odd one. Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to this fact because when people see my son, they often jump to conclusions about his skin. People see what is different and focus on it (and in some unfortunate cases, comment on it), whether it’s the kid with bad skin, the guy with the big nose, the woman with the wonky eye, or this guy:

MOLE!

Poor Little Princess Beard. Doomed to only be noticed for her abnormal chin growth (though I do like that swanky striped fabric accessory) instead of her evenly spaced eyes and button nose. Here, Princess. Let me help you out:

This post submitted to Magic Marker Monday.

My food sampling week in review:

We tried out a new fruit this week, the horned melon. I’ve been calling it a horny melon because I have a dirty mind and can’t help myself. It kind of looks like a puffer fish on the outside and here is a slightly blurry photo of it cut open:

Wonderful to behold, but I’m not impressed with the taste. It has the consistency of Jell-O with lots of seeds. I think it might be better as a topping squirted/squeezed over a fruit platter. if anyone has any ideas on what to do with this fruit, I’m all ears.

This week I also found a popsicle mold.

I bought it at Linens n Things many moons ago and then stuck in the cupboard above the fridge and promptly forgot about it. I’m thrilled to have this now, because so many of the in-store popsicles have either soy, which The Boy can’t have or high fructose corn syrup, which no one should, or quite simply, a really high sugar content, also which no one should have.

I make pretty low-key popsicles - half juice, half water (and I’m hoping to change that to one part juice, three parts water). Today’s batch was with 100 percent not-from-concentrate orange juice, and enjoyed, no less, with a foot soak, because that’s how we roll:

Check out Little No Limit double fisting it…

Today, a post of mine was featured on 5 Minutes for Parenting as part of their Daily Dose of Humor series, courtesy of Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in my Subjective Life. Some of you old timers might even remember when I originally posted it, a trip to the veterinarian, as told by a sports commentator.

Of course, now I feel compelled to write something funny because what if someone reads that over there and then clicks over here to read more of my posts, expecting to laugh? What if I don’t live up? What if they think, oh, she’s not funny after all? What if I’m crazy? What if can’t concentrate on writing this post and the thought going through my head is youhavetobefunnyyouhavetobefunnyyouhavetobefunnybefunnybefunnybefunny
aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

Why don’t you tell a joke, Ms. Funny Girl?

Ooh! A joke! I love jokes!

Nobody asked you.

Okay, I got one. Why did Riley cross the road?

Why?

To chase down the Notorious F.O.X.

That’s the dumbest joke I ever—oh, I see what this is about: you still mad about this morning. Riley, let me be blunt: if I didn’t ever escape, you’d never get any exercise. I’m doin’ you a favor.

Yes, well, the next time you think I need to exercise, pop in some Billy Blanks. I’m totally worn out now.

Me too. That early morning run wore me out. You faster than I expected.

Don’t let the smooth taste fool you.

Whatever you say, fool. I’m goin’ to sleep. Peace out–

This dog of mine…

I’ve become rather fond of Susanne’s Friday’s Fave Five. Five things since last Friday for which I am glad:

1. SOCIAL: Went to my best friend’s birthday party. Good friends, good company, lots of poker. And sushi. All while the kids watched Barbie Mariposa. A winning combination.

2. HEALTH: My doctor decided I had healed enough from the MRSA infection that we could stop filling my abscess with gauze. I’m sure that sounds gross (because it IS gross), but it’s a huge deal to me. As a side note, my nurse that day is just waiting to be turned into a character in one of my books. He had a Dead Kennedys tattoo and a foul mouth — have you ever heard a nurse say “That d*ck” about a doctor from a different facility? (more on this in a later post)

3. WRITING: I finished my first essay for a print publication and turned it in ahead of deadline. Now all I have to do is wait and find out if it’s good. I also finished a flash fiction piece for the last round of the NYC Midnight contest (which means I made it to the final cut!). This time it was a romance at a laundromat that includes a hammer. (I posted the story from the first round here, but I’ve since decided not to inflict the rest upon you.)

4. LOCAL NEWS: The siren alarm from the nearby boob factory nuclear power plant was tested this week – which means the siren alarms from the boob factory nuclear power plant were not ACTUALLY going off and I did not have to escape from nuclear meltdown or take a potassium iodide supplement.

5. ENTERTAINMENT: I caught up on the first two discs of Season Four of Entourage.

VICTORY!!!!!!!

Little No Limit pronounces some words differently than others and also sometimes mis-hears the way words are pronounced. On occasion, this leads to interesting cases of “Do you think that’s what she meant to say?”

Lately, Little No Limit has shown an interest in singing. She particular enjoys the song about a certain spider that scurries up the water spout, and then rain comes (and you pound your hands down), and then the spider is washed out, and the sun comes out (and you wave your arms around like a lunatic), and then the spider, our undaunted champion, climbs back up?

You know that one?

Little No Limit calls it The Bitchy, Bitchy Spider.

I haven’t decided if I should put a stop to it or record it.

(By the way, there’s a nice review of my blog on Do You Digg It. Check it out!)